Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains (25 page)

“Of course. They were shocked because they thought he was suggesting the establishment of a false religion, and he had to explain that he didn’t mean them to—” Brek stopped, suddenly overcome by indignation. “But the way it’s turned out, they
did
—and if we keep silent we’re party to it.”

“I don’t understand religion,” Noren said. “I never have. I didn’t understand all the First Scholar’s thoughts even while I was sharing them. But they involved something… sacred, Brek. I don’t know what he called it; maybe you do, since according to Stefred, each person experiences the dreams differently, depending on what comes from his own mind. Anyway, whatever it was, I do know the First Scholar wouldn’t have used it to fool people. He wouldn’t have employed that kind of falsehood for
any
purpose, not even for saving humanity… and if he’d lived to know that the Prophecy isn’t as true as he believed it was, he would have repudiated it, just as we’ve got to.”

Brek nodded. “It’s a—a perversion of all he stood for to let the Mother Star represent something false,” he agreed painfully. “How can any Scholar not realize that? Noren, I—I think I’m more of a heretic now than I was in the first place.”

Noren sat beside him, searching his face; it was too dark by this time to see it clearly. “There’s an aircar in camp,” he said cautiously, “and someone’s got to go for supplies. You’re a pilot—”

“Yes, but—”

“If we leave just at dawn, nobody will see us; they won’t suspect until it’s too late. There’ll be nothing they can do once we’re gone. The villages in the third season zone harvested this week, and tomorrow people will gather in the squares to celebrate. We can land in the largest one, and coming by aircar, we’ll draw a big crowd.”

“We’ll do that, all right,” Brek declared. “Crowds can turn into mobs, Noren, and somehow I don’t think people are going to like what we say to them. Village heretics have the nominal protection of village law, but City dwellers who dispute the Prophecy while claiming to be Scholars—well, there’s no telling what’ll happen.”

“They’ll kill us,” Noren stated calmly. “Did you think I didn’t know that?”

Brek himself had known, obviously, and had accepted it as he had the apparent death sentence he’d incurred at his original arrest. “I—I wasn’t sure whether you’d thought that far,” he said.

“Oh? You assumed that if I had, I’d be afraid?” Noren strove to control himself, realizing that he was being unfair to Brek, and added quietly, “I saw my best friend murdered by a mob when I was small.”

“You never told me.”

“I’ve never talked about it to anyone. He was a lot older than I was, and the first heretic I ever knew. They arrested him… and then later that night they burned the jail. With us it will be over faster; once they grasp what we’re saying, they’ll probably stone us.” Noren’s voice was hard, bitter. “They’ll tell themselves they’re destroying wicked ideas, but underneath, at least some of them will believe—and the ones who do will throw the most stones.”

“You don’t have much faith in anything,” Brek observed, “not even in people benefiting from what we offer them.”

“I’m a realist. As I told Talyra once, faith is nothing more than being content with ignorance.”

“What are you going to tell Talyra now?”

“Nothing,” muttered Noren. “What could I?” He would have no chance anyway, he knew. Even if he was not killed, he would be isolated in the City; he would spend what remained of his life inside the Hall of Scholars.

Brek looked uncomfortable. “It—it doesn’t seem quite right to do this by stealth,” he maintained. “I mean—well, they trust us. There’s no rule against my flying the aircar without telling anyone; they’ll think it’s odd, but they won’t object. No Scholar would misuse equipment, so they’ll assume we’ve gone for supplies and that we left early because we wanted a few extra hours in the City.”

“I know,” Noren said, equally distressed. That was the aspect of it he liked least. “We won’t try to escape the consequences,” he declared. “If for some reason the crowd’s not violent—if Technicians are there, for instance—we’ll go back to the City afterward and confess. Besides, it’s not as if we were endangering the aircar! Villagers won’t damage it no matter what they do to us; it’s sacred to them.”

“Yet if they all believed us and overthrew the system, a lot of equipment would be damaged. We’d have hastened the end.”

“As long as there’s going to be an end, what difference does it make how soon it comes?” Noren argued. But underneath he was aware that his concern for the fate of the aircar did seem inconsistent.

*
 
*
 
*

Noren did not sleep. What point was there in sleeping the night before one died? Lying still in the dark, he closed his eyes to the stars while the endless, futile questions circled in his mind: why were worlds formed… why were worlds destroyed… what was life, and what was death? At that last one, terror spread through him again, but he mastered it grimly. He would not yield to terror; he was through with that! Truth was the only important thing, and though the kind he’d once sought might be nonexistent, he was determined to stand by the principles that were firm.

There was no point in eating or drinking either, he decided when dawn approached, silhouetting the Tomorrow Mountains against pale yellow. Food and water were in short supply and should not be wasted. He was not hungry anyway. His mouth was dry, but he knew that was partly the result of fear and therefore he paid no attention. In any case, to go to the cistern might attract notice.

The camp was quiet; no one was yet awake. No guard was kept in a settlement founded on mutual trust. On his way to the aircar Noren passed the low hillock behind which he knew Talyra’s chosen hollow lay. Picturing her there asleep, untouched by any premonition of the grief he could not spare her, he knew he could not leave without seeing her once more.

His feet, sinking into the spongy moss, made no sound. He did not plan to wake her, only to look; she slept fully clothed on a lightweight sheet of brown cloth, as did everyone. Standing there, Noren cried silently,
Oh, Talyra, if only we were back in the village… if only I’d not been a heretic at all
. . . . But he knew he did not mean it. He could not have been other than what he was.

Talyra stirred and then sat up, roused not by noise but by his mere presence. She smiled joyously. Too late, Noren realized what he had done. If he simply walked away, she would be hurt and bewildered. She would suppose he had come, only to decide that he did not want what she was clearly willing to offer. She’d remain forever convinced that he had reaffirmed their betrothal more from duty than from love.

“Darling,” he whispered, “there’s no time… but I had to see you. I’m—leaving. Brek’s waiting in the aircar—”

“Leaving? For how many days, Noren?”

“For good.”

Talyra, stunned, gasped, “But why? Even yesterday you said nothing of going back—”

“I didn’t know yesterday.”

Rapidly she began to fold her belongings into the sheet. “I’ll be sent back too, in a few days,” she declared. “Do you think if I spoke to the Scholars, they’d let me come now?”

“No!” Noren exclaimed, too loudly, and then, whispering again, “No, you mustn’t!”

His tone of voice gave him away; Talyra was too keen not to sense the desperation in it. “You don’t have permission either,” she asserted. “The aircar never leaves till after breakfast; and anyway, if the Scholars had told you last night, you’d have said goodbye then.”

He could not say that he did not need permission; she supposed him a Technician like herself. Noren pulled her to him, kissing her, but she wrenched away. “You never kiss me like that,” she said, “not as if it was… the last time. What’s wrong, Noren?”

It was hard for him to keep back the tears. “We… we won’t see each other in the City. By the Star, Talyra, I never wanted things to turn out this way—”

He expected her to be hysterical, but she was not. Very calmly she announced, “If we can’t see each other in the City, then we’ll at least have the trip. Either you let me come, or I’ll wake the Scholars and ask.”

“No, darling, it’s wrong for you—”

“For me more than for you? I don’t think so. No Scholar has forbidden me; I break no provision of the Law. They are good and just and sometimes more human than you are!
They
would not expect me to say goodbye like this.”

Noren was in no shape to think rationally; he knew only that though any Scholar she might wake would tell him to go and her to stay, he could not face a Scholar with so bald a deceit, nor could he watch her sorrow. Incapable of reply, he started for the aircar, with Talyra walking beside him. He avoided Brek’s eyes when they climbed in, and there was nothing Brek dared say in her presence. He did not know how much Noren had revealed to her. “Let’s get going,” Noren urged, and the aircar lifted. Only as the outpost fell away beneath did he realize that he could not possibly reveal anything.

It was of course unthinkable that Talyra should witness what was likely to take place in the village; and besides, he could not bear that she should know of his relapse. She would grieve over that even without guessing his peril. There was nothing to do but go on into the City, get supplies, and land in the village on their way back.

They climbed into the brightening sky and leveled off over the mountains. “Take over for a few minutes,” Brek said. “I didn’t check much, leaving the way we did.” He turned to the dials on the control panel.

Noren held the direction lever as he had done when flying with Emet, but his mind whirled so that he could not keep it steady. Brek’s face was tense, drawn; plainly the change of plan dismayed him. Talyra, who sat behind, was silent. How were they to endure the hours of delay? Noren thought. To leave the City before late afternoon might arouse suspicion; they would have to occupy themselves, perhaps talk to people, all day long. They might even encounter Stefred!

He stared down at the mountains, deeply shadowed in the early light, and it was as if they were no part of the earth. A touch of the same paralyzing detachment he’d felt in space hit him, whereupon his fear burst into panic. He must
move
. . . . Without conscious intent he gripped the lever and pressed it forward till the ridges swung closer, tipping at odd angles like things viewed while one was weightless. Their bulk was appalling, yet still they seemed flat, not solid… .

“Noren!” Brek shouted. “Noren, what are you trying to do? We’re losing altitude—”

Noren came to himself and in horror jerked the lever back. The aircar rose abruptly—too abruptly. It began to lose power. In flat country that would not have been serious, for even a disabled car sank relatively slowly, drawing on reserves; but the terrain below was not flat, and Noren had no experience with air currents. In the effort to regain control, he veered off course and the rising sun shone full into his eyes through the domed canopy, blinding him; it was the nova once more… .

Brek made a grab for the lever. But it was too late; even before the jagged peaks closed in and he heard Talyra’s scream, Noren knew that they were going to crash.

Chapter Seven

Noren opened his eyes to sunlight and a sky that was abnormally blue. He was lying amid the wreckage of the aircar; there was a sharp yellow rock within a hand’s span of his body, driven through what had once been floor, but he did not seem to be injured. The padded seat had cushioned the jolt of falling. As for the others…

“Talyra!” he shouted, struggling to free himself from the straps. “Talyra, where are you?”

“Here,” she answered from behind him. “I think I’m all right; I don’t hurt anywhere. But I can’t get loose.”

Part of the aircar’s domed top had collapsed on her, pinning her to her seat. It was not heavy enough to have caused injury, but because of its bulk Noren could not lift it alone. He scrambled back to where he had left Brek, who, although also apparently unhurt, was not yet conscious. “Pour some water on his face,” Talyra suggested.

“There isn’t any water,” Noren replied, noticing that the front section of the aircar, which contained the small emergency supply tank, had been smashed into rubble against the outcropping of rock into which they had plowed. Not until he stood up, surveying the landscape around them, did he realize the implications of what he had said.

They were somewhere in the higher reaches of the Tomorrow Mountains; tall crags closed them in on every side. Beyond those crags, should there be a passage through, would be only more rock, interspersed with gravelly patches containing occasional clumps of wholly inedible vegetation. He did not know if there would be any water, but if there was, it would be impure water, and they could not drink it.

Or perhaps they could. It would not really matter whether they did or not, since they would not live long enough to have children.

There was not the slightest possibility that they could survive; he knew that. The radiophone had been in the smashed portion of the aircar, and it did not take Brek’s knowledge of radiophones to see that this one was beyond repair. Nor was there any possibility of repairing the propulsive mechanism, pieces of which were strewn here and there among the rocks. It was pure luck that the force of the crash had been absorbed by the impact of that section, thus sparing the cabin… though on second thought, Noren decided, the luck was bad rather than good. A quick death would have been easier than what lay ahead of them.